27

Appendix 27

See A. Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Mythology," Or. 17 (1948), p. 40: “After Enkidu tossed towards her . . . what is euphemistically termed the ‘right thigh’ of the bull, the goddess and her devotees performed age-old rites over the part of the bull.”

True as this statement certainly is, it does not explain much — nor is it even asked why it must be the right thigh (imittu; compare H. Holma, *Die Namen der Körperteile im *Assyrisch-Babylonischen [1911], pp. 131 f. See for the “euphemism” Holma, pp. 96f.).

The consensus of the experts, in overlooking that the GE talks explicitly of the celestial bull, keeps them from asking relevant questions, and their conviction that Mesopotamians and Egyptians had not much in common prevents them from recognizing the “bull’s thigh” when they see it. Yet it is there: Maskheti, the thigh of the bull, Ursa Major, depicted on the astronomical ceilings in the tombs of Senmut, Seti, in the Ramesseum, etc. In Altaic mythology, Ursa turns into the leg of a stag; in Mexico we find it as the lost “foot” of Tezcatlipoca.

The constellations are named according to a system, and if we meet “incomplete” or mutilated characters among them, we have to ask for the sufficient reason, e.g., why the ship Argo is a stern only, why Pegasus is barely half a horse — apart from its standing on its head and having wings — and why Taurus is the head and first third of a bull, his “thigh” turning around in the circumpolar region. Thus, it might be something to think about that in the Round Zodiac of Dendera (Roman period), the circumpolar “thigh” shows a ram sitting on it, looking back, moreover, as befits the zodiacal Aries (see F. J. Lauth, Zodiaques de Denderah [1865], p. 44). G. A. Wainwright, in “A Pair of Constellations,” Studies presented to F. L. Griffith (1932), p. 373, with reference to Bénédite, mentions a thigh with the head of a ram from Edfu, called the “Foreleg of Khnum” (cf. Monumenti dell’Egitto e della Nubia, Ippolito Rosellini, ed. [1844], vol. 3, plate 24).